In Atomic Heart, Facility 3826 is crammed with enemies, resources, quest objects, and chests with hidden resources. As the story progresses, looking for these enemies and objects becomes harder using your naked eye. For this purpose, a scanner comes in use.
The Scanner is found at the very start of the game and given the game’s visuals; it becomes a handy tool to scan your surroundings. In harder modes, the scanner can be used to know the number of enemies in a room and plan accordingly to avoid being swarmed.
While the scanner remains useful, many players are having trouble regarding how to use the scanner in Atomic Heart. Using a scanner is simple and trouble-free, as explained by our guide.
What does the Scanner do?
The scanner in Atomic Heart can be used to bring out the enemies and objects hidden in plain sight. A scanner is a helpful tool that will come in handy many times throughout the game.
After equipping the scanner, everything around you will turn grey and the persons and items of interest will be highlighted according to the set color code.
Your foes or people that can potentially be your foes will be highlighted red or orange and you can also see your enemy’s weaknesses and strengths using the scanner.
A purple highlight indicates plot objects and quest objects which you need in the playthrough while blue highlight points to cartridges and boxes with resources that you can loot. Clues and interactive objects will have a white highlight around them.
How to use the Atomic Heart Scanner
If you are playing Atomic Heart on an Xbox, you must simultaneously press the RB button twice to activate the scanner. In order to hold the scanner vision, you need to hold the RB key after double tapping for as long as you need the scanner.
After you are done scanning your surroundings, leave the RB key and the scanner will go off. You can equip the scanner again anytime using the same key and use it as many times as you want as there is no energy limitation to the use of the scanner.
Similarly, if you are playing Atomic Heart on PlayStation, you need to do the same but with the R1 key. Double tap it to activate the scanner vision and then hold the key down for the third time you tap it.
The scanner manual for Atomic Heart is quite ambiguous as it says to hold the R1+R1 and RB+RB key which does not clearly state how to hold on to the scanner vision.
